April 9, 2010. Friday.
Situation: A couple days ago, while driving to work down O__ C_____ Road, I saw two turkeys crossing the road; Moi has mentioned that she’s heard turkeys gobbling up in Hutchinson
State of the Path: Moi is outside shaving more saplings for Wigwam II. She complains that the chickens are prowling around the back porch, knocking over clay pots. It’s cold enough today to be wearing my denim jacket. Most of the trees, the birch tree by the garden, the willow by the corn crib, all the maples, are getting their leaves -- I’d say all the trees except the black walnuts and the ashes. The wild mustard has grown considerably, and has gotten flowers, which are still green, not yellow like they eventually will be. There are so many plants coming up now I wish I had the leisure today to identify more – maybe I’ll have more time tomorrow. I pass by Moi who’s now down at Wigwam II tying up her saplings as poles. In the middle of bug land, I see an area of point blue eye grass growing.
State of the Creek: Despite the rain we had last night, there’s not much more water in the creek than yesterday. A multiflora bramble snags my pant leg, and I beat it back with the fetching stick (which is actually a little bigger than my walking stick). Mway spends a lot of time sniffing on the ground on the other side of the creek. I hear a lot of birds, including some sort of whistling bird that has a call that sounds new to me – but I don’t have time to linger and look today. By the ridge along bug land, water suddenly seeps in my one boot, and it is ice cold.
The Fetch: Up at the clearing, Mway greets me, smiling, and she seems ready for a bout of fetching. But what do you know – again, just one fetch today.
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The Grammar, Syntax, and Morphology of Scents
To begin, we must emphasize that, whether a system of signs is reading material or what we might simply call smelly material, the signifier is a material substance, or an arrangement thereof. Thus far we have denoted the fundamental reading unit of reading material to be the word, but, more precisely, the fundamental unit, or basic sign, must be defined as that manner of manifestation of a material substance (signifier) that has meaning (signified): this is commonly called a morpheme. Thus for reading material a morpheme may be a collection of graphemes that forms a whole word, such as “dog,” or it may be a collection that forms something that does not stand alone as a word, such as the suffix “-ed” in the word “dogged.” In reading material, only arrangements of the material substance, the distribution of the graphite or ink that forms the graphic image, are morphemes; the material substance itself, the graphite or ink, is not one. In contrast to this, smelly material consists partly of signifiers that are arrangements of a material substance, but the material substances themselves, of which there are a great variety, are also themselves signifiers. A morpheme of smelly material can be an arrangement of scents, their location or distribution, but it can also be the scent itself, or its concentration. Smelly material, in contrast to reading material, consists of four different kinds of signifiers, or morphemes: (1) the scent itself, (2) the concentration of the scent, (3) the distribution of the scent, and (4) the location of the scent with respect to other scents and objects. Each of these types of signifier possess a signified, but each signifier type, within itself and in combination with other signifier types, is also determinative to a degree of the other signs’ meanings: like the one type of signifier of reading material,* the four different signifier or morpheme types of smelly material point at once to absent references and to each other: they are at once outwardly reflecting and interrelational, as the following chart shows. In this chart, we list in the first column each basic type of signifier or morpheme for smelly material and in the second column its reflective function, i.e. its type of signified or general meaning. In the third column, we list the interrelational function of the signifier type as modeled in terms of the grammar or syntax of reading material. Finally, in the fourth column are listed examples of specific reading material morphemes the smelly material basic morpheme could indicate:
Signifier or Signified Type or Grammatical or Examples of Reading
Morpheme General Meaning Syntactic Morpheme
Type Equivalent
Scent itself individual proper noun Atlas
definite article the
demonstrative
pronoun this, that, such
interrogative
pronoun who, which, what
reflexive
pronoun himself, itself
type of object noun nuisance, interloper
indefinite article a
general notion abstract noun being, possibility,
of object contigency
various qualities adjective male, immature, -ish, -ive
of object personal pronoun he, it
degree of qualities adverb too, very, -ly
state of object passive verb is
Concentration time adverb recently, long ago, no longer
of Scent subordinating
conjunction when
actions active verb dawdle, goof around
time of action past tense verb dawdled, goofed around
Distribution of general actions verb run, circle, step backward
Scent noun confusion, stupidity
adverb confusedly, stupidly
adjective certain, confused, stupid
continuous action conjunction and, furthermore, moreover
adjective likely, possible
disrupted action conjunction but, however, or
adjective -un, -im
auxiliary would have run
verb
negation not run
proposed action conjunction if
auxiliary could have run
verb
resumed action conjunction if
adverb nevertheless
future tense will run
verb
Location of Scent relations in space preposition under, on, to, for, after
with respect to relative
other Scents or pronoun that, which, who
Objects subordinating
conjunction although, in order that, so
adverb here, there, way over there
relations in time preposition before, after, since, because
subordinating
conjunction while, where, when, even if
relations between plural noun nuisances, -s, -es
objects conjunction Atlas and a rabbit
demonstrative
pronoun this, that, that yonder
transitive verb sniff
Thus we see that, when it is in the countryside, the canine does not attend to one signifier in isolation: it attends to them in combinations. Admittedly, the morphemes of smelly material bear striking differences to those of reading material, even beyond their material manifestations. Each morpheme type of smelly material, as we see above, can have multiple grammatical or syntactic functions, so that one morpheme of smelly material can perform the functions of what in reading material would require two or more morphemes. Nevertheless, scent morphemes work together in a fashion similar to the way morphemes of reading material work together in a sentence. Let us now take a close look at how this happens. What we will do is follow an imaginary canine outdoors, note each signifier it encounters, then specify the signified of each one by rendering the signified in the form of morphemes of reading material, at the same time indicating, as near as possible, the function of the signifier in terms of the grammar or syntax of reading material. It is important to remember that, for the canine, the signifieds do not exist in the form we will render them and also that they refer to things that are absent: as signifieds, they exist, as we’ve mentioned before, as one or more symbols, one or more icons, or a mixture of both, in the perceiver’s mind. Here, then, comes every canine on its way to work, and among many scents on a patch of ground it finds one to be of special interest. The scent itself refers to a particular object, the type of that object, an object in general, certain qualities of the object to a certain degree, and its fact of being – “Atlas, this, the, a, nuisance, being, immature, very, is” – Proper Noun, Demonstrative Pronoun, Definite Article, Indefinite Article, Common Noun in Apposition, Second Common Noun in Apposition, Adjective, Adverb, Passive Verb. Next, the concentration of the scent indicates a time when the object was in that place – “yesterday, was” – Adverb, Past Tense Passive Verb. The concentration of the scent, as well as its distribution over the ground, then indicates an action that the object performed – “sniffed, dawdled, confusedly” – Past Tense Active Verbs, Adverb. Then the location of the scent with respect to other scents and objects indicates the objects near where the action was performed or the objects that the action was performed on – “under bush, PVC pipe, TV knob” – Adverbial Prepositional Phrase, Direct Object, Direct Object. Further on, the canine picks up another scent of special interest and notes its concentration, distribution, and location – “rabbit, that, the, a, pesky, sick, is, yesterday, was, ate, bark, off sumac, and, hopped, toward hedgerow” – Common Noun, Demonstrative Pronoun, Definite Article, Indefinite Article, Adjective, Adjective, Passive Verb, Adverb, Past Tense Passive Verb, Past Tense Active Verb, Direct Object, Adjectival Prepositional Phrase, Conjunction, Past Tense Active Verb, Adverbial Prepositional Phrase. But the canine also notices that the first scent stops just short of the second scent, and the relative location of these two scents relates back to the object of the first scent and indicates that the object of the first scent did not perform certain actions it could have – “Atlas, could, run, after rabbit, but, not” – Proper Noun, Auxiliary Verb, Active Verb, Adverbial Prepositional Phrase, Conjunction, Negation. All together then the various morphemes of smelly material can be rendered, in terms of the morphemes of reading material, as follows: “Atlas this the a nuisance being immature very is yesterday was sniffed dawdled confusedly under bush PVC pipe TV knob rabbit that the a pesky sick is yesterday was ate bark off sumac and hopped toward hedgerow Atlas could run after rabbit but not.”
We must note here that, whereas the sentence of smelly material only requires about ten signifiers, the sentence of reading material requires about forty-four signifiers to arrive at the same signified. And, of course, the sentence of reading material we arrived at is not rendered in the usual grammatical and syntactic structure of English. Without changing the meaning significantly, we can rearrange the morphemes, excluding some of the above and adopting new ones, to arrive at the following sentence: “Atlas, this very immature nuisance, could have run after that pesky sick rabbit that hopped toward the hedgerow, but instead he just dawdled under a bush here, confusedly sniffing a PVC pipe and a TV knob, and while he was doing that, the rabbit simply ate some bark off a sumac.” This second sentence contains some fifty-one signifiers. And even more sentences could be generated – indeed, an indefinite number -- whereas the smelly material sentence can only be rendered one way, the way it was encountered. One thing this comparison shows, admittedly, is that the morphemes of reading material have a far greater flexibility and power of elaboration than those of smelly material, and this complexity and sophistication will pose numerous problems for the canine seeking to learn to read. Nevertheless our main point is to emphasize the similarities between the two sign systems. Both organize signifiers by focusing the most attention upon an action or a condition and the participants in that action or condition, while simultaneously focusing less attention on further describing that action or condition and those participants. This basic structure – participant, action (or condition), participant, intermingled with descriptors – is a common ground which will serve as a starting point for the canine when it moves from the countryside to the library. The distinction between smelly material and reading material, we therefore see, is not so much the hard difference between things having different functions, but the softer distinction between things made of different materials, a soft distinction that permits the canine, when it encounters reading material, to make a perceptual adjustment to those new materials, even in the face of difficulties in that transition, as the questionable being bounds downhill toward the creek, stumbling over sticks and ruts, briars scratching his fur, more a garbage can buffeted by the wind than the dog he supposedly is, a Mrs. Mole, with her brood of three, nevertheless grateful for his inattention.
*Morphemes of reading material are commonly classified into two types: bound and free. But both these types are but one kind of manifestation of a material substance, viz. the arrangement thereof.
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